Illawarra Unity - Journal of the Illawarra Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History Volume 6 Issue 1 Illawarra Unity Article 4 January 2006 The 1978 Military Occupation of Bowral Damian Cahill University of Wollongong, [email protected] Rowan Cahill University of Wollongong, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/unity Recommended Citation Cahill, Damian and Cahill, Rowan, The 1978 Military Occupation of Bowral, Illawarra Unity - Journal of the Illawarra Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, 6(1), 2006, 24-37. Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/unity/vol6/iss1/4 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] The 1978 Military Occupation of Bowral Abstract Early during the morning of Monday, 13 February 1978, a city council garbage truck stopped in Sydney’s George Street, outside the Hilton Hotel, to collect the weekend contents of an overflowing litter bin. woT council workers began to empty the bin, and as they did, a bomb hidden in it exploded, killing them both. A nearby policeman later died in hospital from injuries received, and seven other people were seriously injured. Inside the Hilton Hotel were eleven visiting heads of government—the Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting (CHOGRM) was due to start in Sydney later that day. On Tuesday 14 February the Sydney Morning Herald announced that Australia was no longer ‘immune to the international disease of terrorism and violence’. This journal article is available in Illawarra Unity - Journal of the Illawarra Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History: https://ro.uow.edu.au/unity/vol6/iss1/4 Illawarra Unity The 1978 Military Occupation of Bowral Damien Cahill and Rowan Cahill arly during the morning of Monday, 13 February 1978, a city council garbage truck stopped in Sydney’s George EStreet, outside the Hilton Hotel, to collect the weekend contents of an overflowing litter bin. Two council workers began to empty the bin, and as they did, a bomb hidden in it exploded, killing them both. A nearby policeman later died in hospital from injuries received, and seven other people were seriously injured. Inside the Hilton Hotel were eleven visiting heads of government—the Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting (CHOGRM) was due to start in Sydney later that day. On Tuesday 14 February the Sydney Morning Herald announced that Australia was no longer ‘immune to the international disease of terrorism and violence’.1 Soon after the explosion, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser was being briefed about the situation by his closest advisers and security personnel. It was the first of a hectic round of emergency briefings and meetings that day, including a meeting with New South Wales Premier Neville Wran, and a Federal Cabinet meeting. Amongst decisions reached during the day were to continue the CHOGRM programme as planned, but with dramatically altered travel arrangements to a conference retreat in rural Bowral; and in relation to this, to call out the Army.2 Late that night (13 February) in Admiralty House, Sydney, Governor General Sir Zelman Cowan signed an Executive Council minute to call out the Defence Force to safeguard ‘the national and international interests of the Commonwealth of Australia’ from what were claimed to be ‘terrorist activities and related violence’. With a few strokes of his pen, Cowan effectively overcame a long standing Australian cautionary emphasis on the primacy of civilian authorities in maintaining peace-time domestic order.3 Illawarra Unity The Bowral call-out During the afternoon of 13 February 1978, four army helicopters reconnoitred the Bowral township for two hours, landing on local sporting fields, and utilizing a private airstrip on the property of industrialist Sir William Tyree on the outskirts of town. The following day the military occupied the town. Establishing a temporary command post just inside the Sydney (northern) end of town and opposite the small war-memorial park, troops spread along the main street and positioned themselves in twos at each street corner, secured the railway station, the nearby railway tunnel, and each end of the town. Camp was set up on a local football field. By 6.30 am everyone was in place and residents wakened to the sound of Kiawa helicopters from the 161 Reconnaissance Squadron circling over town, the sight of about 800 fully armed troops, magazines in place, while teams of soldiers scoured drains, garbage bins, hedges and shrubbery. Closer to Sydney, armed troops, bayonets fixed, established a presence in neighbouring Mittagong on the Hume Highway, patrolling the streets and the railway line. About five kilometres north of town along the highway, partially obscured by roadside bush, another military presence was established. Between Bowral and Sydney, troops were strategically deployed along the Sydney-Melbourne railway line, with particular attention given to tunnels, bridges, overpasses and stations. Nearly 2000 military personnel were involved under the command of Vietnam veterans Brigadier David Butler and Lieutenant-Colonel Murray Blake. The troops, all based at the Holsworthy army base (NSW), were drawn from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, the 5-7th Battalion Royal Australian Regiment (RAR), and the 12-15th Medium Regiments Royal Australian Artillery.4 The troops were deployed in a manner that exposed them to civil prosecution; as a consequence they were uneasily conscious of this and aware that if required to fire, there was the possibility of a lack of ‘official backing’. Contributing to a sense of unease, which went to senior levels, was confusion about the ‘threat’ they were countering, about procedures to be followed in the event of trouble, and the exact nature of their power.5 Externally, from a Bowral civilian viewpoint, the deployment gave the appearance of martial law. In the absence of local information to the contrary from either military or civil authorities, rumours circulated in the district to the effect that martial law was in operation and that a curfew was in force during the night of Tuesday 14 February.6 Illawarra Unity Bowral 1978 as a precedent The government’s motivations in calling out the troops in 1978 are unclear. Also unclear are the identity and motivation of the person (or persons) who planted the bomb outside the Hilton Hotel which provided the pretext for the military call-out. As Jenny Hocking points out, there is a ‘continuing suggestion that the security services were in some way involved in the Hilton bombing’.7 Certainly, there is little, if any, evidence that ‘terrorist activities and related violence’ posed a threat to the CHOGRM conference. Such absence of threat belies the far reaching implications of the 1978 military occupation of Bowral. The Governor General’s minute was open ended, to remain ‘in force until revoked’.8 According to A.R. Blackshield, in an early discussion of the militarised response, it ‘raised more questions than it answered’.9 No attempt was made to specify the units or sections of the armed forces to be used, the number of personnel to be involved, the geography of their deployment, nor the ‘degree of intervention in civilian life they might undertake.’ And no attempt was made to establish a claim ‘to legal validity on any precise constitutional ground’.10 The Hilton bombing and the militarised response placed security firmly on Australia’s national agenda and helped to strengthen the power of the federal government in domestic affairs. The bombing was also a major factor leading to the formation of the Australian Federal Police, which came into operation in 1979. Importantly, as Hocking argues, ‘the ambivalent concept of ‘terrorism’ as a specific legal entity’, capable of political definition and manipulation, was introduced to Australian law; and ‘a precedent for the use of the Army in the name of ‘counter terrorism’’ was established.11 Blackshield sees wider ramifications, arguing that the call-out ‘strikingly demonstrated the vulnerability of our democracy under existing law’, an implication being that should a future Australian government seriously embark on a military coup, it ‘would encounter no constitutional obstacles or restrictions at all—at least as far as the black letter constitutional text is concerned’.12 The Hilton bombing and the militarised response invigorated political, strategic, bureaucratic and legal reform processes, leading to the development over the next twenty-five years of what Jenny Hocking has described as: a comprehensive strategy and organisational network of domestic counter-terrorism according to an adaptation of a counter-insurgency approach which is not only Illawarra Unity inappropriate to our own political context but which also carries significant dangers for political and civil liberties in its application.13 Recent codifications by the federal government of the definition of terrorism as well as extensions of the range of activities for which the military can be used to suppress civilian unrest are the latest aspects of this strategy, which, in some circumstances, could be applied against militant labour movement protests. While the future is in the making, the historical record shows that Labor and non-Labor governments have variously used the armed forces against the trade union and protest movements. The armed forces generally were mobilised as back- up during the 1923 Melbourne Police Strike and also provided strike breaking assistance; troops were used as strike breakers during the 1949 Coal Strike in New South Wales; army and naval personnel were used to variously break bans by the Seamen’s Union of Australia (SUA) and the Waterside Workers Federation in 1951, 1952, 1953, and 1954; the navy was used to break an SUA boycott against the Vietnam War in 1967; the air force was used to break union bans on Qantas in 1981; and the navy and air force were used to break the 1989 industrial campaign by the Australian Federation of Air Pilots.